Interesting idea, but i think that could potentially end up being a bit more OP than you expect, since, Blizzard obviously dont favour us keeping a good damage buff up. but damage depending i reckon it could work.

If you don't turn it off when there's nothing to AoE, that's your own damn fault.

Indeed. Much like Blady Flurry.

Arcane Explosion might actually work as a debuff that can be detonated by either Arcane Barrage or Temporal Rift. This way, you can let Arcane Barrage hit every target that is affected by the Arcane Explosion debuff. The debuff is applied by Arcane Blast (your target and up to 4 additional targets). Blizzard would be replaced by a different ability. The ability I described earlier; a portal opens above the Mage, the Mage then sends dozens of Arcane Missiles through the portal. Another portal opens above the target area and hits all targets inside the area directly below the portal. Any target hit by (let's call it, once more Arcane Storm is inflicted with the Arcane Explosion debuff. The spell is channeled, like Blizzard. Five seconds, one it's completed, you get 4 Arcane Charges. Those charges allow you to do Arcane Barrage to consume them and hit all targets inflicted with Arcane Explosion. 6 or less targets would be your standard AoE rotation: 4xAB 1xAbarr. 7 or more would be 1xArcane Storm 1xAbarr.

Arcane AoE is boring. That would make it interesting and you would actually have to pay attention to the amount of targets you are attacking.

I still like the idea of making Arcane Barrage and Temporal Rift finishers. Arcane Barrage is used above 20% (or w/e amount) health and Temporal Rift below that amount. Temporal Rift does not have a cooldown, but it can't be used above 20% health. Temporal Rift could also detonate Arcane Explosion, but maybe it shouldn't. It would create a little bit more diversity in the rotation, actually demanding Mages to think good on what finisher to use. Temporal Rift does an immense amount of damage and always requires 4 Arcane Charges. Arcane Barrage does not.

Arcane Power does not increase any damage output, it simply allows you to cast Temporal Rift regardless of your targets health. It does still put your Arcane Charges at 4 and keeps it their for the duration. No need for a damage increase, because casting Temporal Rift back to back would already be a massive damage increase. This way, you could also use it in AoE situations. You first cast Arcane Storm, activate Arcane Power and you spam Arcane Barrage. As Arcane Barrage does not have a cooldown, you can spam it. Your first Arcane Barrage would detonate Arcane Explosion. Maybe Presence of Mind could come into play to make Arcane Storm deal it's damage instantly (but only about 50% of the damage) and provide 4 Arcane Charges instantly, allowing you to detonate Arcane Explosion for a second time during Arcane Power.

Damnit, I would love Arcane if it was designed like this. No more bullshit mana and damage increase on Arcane Blast.

Wouldn't Arcane Explosion be better suited as a toggle(i.e. click it once to turn on, click again to turn off, no duration)?

That's what I thought about at first, but the ability to toggle it on and off at will would've made it mandatory in single-target rotation. You will have to enable Arcane Explosion whenever you cast a mana-free Arcane Missiles and disable it afterwards as it's a dps increase. So cooldown-based is better I guess.

AB/AM > 4AC reset it with temporal rift(15s cd) AB/AM> 4AC(7-8s of cast time) use mana gem to be full, then it takes about 7-8s to buildup 4AC for your coming up temporal rift cd (this is the case IF the whole rotation of ABx4 TR ABx4 costs near 80-90% of your mana)

how fast will you go oom with 4charge arcane blasting??? (10 arcane blasts???5???)

is there a penalty for 4charge spamming other than mana loss??? and waste of gaining arcane charge?? (obvioulsy you cant get over 4charges so you will be losing mana since you couldve been using that charge for mana gem)

if mastery turns out to scale extremely well wouldnt your whole rotation be looking like AB/AM for 4AC then fish up AM with barrage/AB resets??(which blizz failed on with scorch weaving)

As for a raid cooldown it might be interesting to put a fusion of Temporal Shield and Disc's Power Word: Barrier, some kind of Temporal Barrier, Occam's Razor, Temporal Vortex or w/e.

Temporal Vortex - creates a temporal vortex in a selected area to prevent harmful possible future outcomes, 50% of the damage you and any friendly targets caught in a Temporal Vortex will receive is healed back over 6 seconds, lasts 6 seconds. 3-5 min cd.

Edit: God damn it! I've written a lengthy post about mana costs and rotation and then my cat flopped on the keyboard. All gone.

how fast will you go oom with 4charge arcane blasting??? (10 arcane blasts???5???)

is there a penalty for 4charge spamming other than mana loss??? and waste of gaining arcane charge?? (obvioulsy you cant get over 4charges so you will be losing mana since you couldve been using that charge for mana gem)

if mastery turns out to scale extremely well wouldnt your whole rotation be looking like AB/AM for 4AC then fish up AM with barrage/AB resets??(which blizz failed on with scorch weaving)

That way you will cast 4AC AB only in rare extreme occasions as you'll spend all your mana in 6 casts. You're better off spending 1AC on ABarr and going back up with AB. That rotation is good when you need burst (AM procs will prolong it), but it's too hard on your mana and you will have to Evocate/Mana Gem soon.

The basic rotation of ABx4, TR, ABx4. ABarrx4 will cost approximately 57% mana over ~22 seconds, significantly less with AM procs and critical strikes.

Scorch weaving allowed sitting at max stacks with only cheap Scorch and mana free AM, so you even had mana to cast AB here and there. In this case to sit at max charge you'll have to cast 16% ABs or 8% ABarrs and 8% ABs, that's costly.

Not sure about gcd free Mana Gems. On the one hand you already spend valuable charge on the cast, on the other hand finisher should feel significant. Also triggering gcd will promote using Mana Gem only at max charge. Not sure if it's good or bad though...

What's the point of the whole mana regen with Evo and Mana Gem if we have no interaction with mana through your reworked Mastery?

Arcane is the only dps spec which has some form of mana management included because of our Mastery. Blizzard have moved away from mana dependancy for dps spec and Arcane is the only one left.

If you remove our current Mastery or change it in a way that removes the damage/mana component, then the whole point of mana regen becomes pointless.

If Arcane is revamped, it will either completely move away from mana and give us a rotation like other dps have OR they will keep our current Mastery snd just change/add/remove spells to work around it. The middle ground which you suggest is senseless in that way.

That's what I thought about at first, but the ability to toggle it on and off at will would've made it mandatory in single-target rotation. You will have to enable Arcane Explosion whenever you cast a mana-free Arcane Missiles and disable it afterwards as it's a dps increase. So cooldown-based is better I guess.

Only if both the explosion and the normal impact damage still occur, which they don't have to. It would be easy to have the explosion only hit secondary targets or replace the normal damage entirely, since such spells already exist.

Besides, it should probably do less than 100% of single target damage for balance purposes.

What's the point of the whole mana regen with Evo and Mana Gem if we have no interaction with mana through your reworked Mastery?

The point is that Blizz tries to make Arcane the dps spec with mana management. I like the idea that as an Arcane mage you can turn your mana into burst damage. What I don't like is our current mastery. With Mana Adept I constantly feel myself at a disadvantage. Oops, I cast a spell - now I'm weaker then I was before. Yet if I try to maximize my current mana %, then I risk wasting the mana from manaregen. That's a lose-lose situation. You're bound to minimize losses, not maximize profits and I hate that. As Arcane I feel more like a lock than a mage in that I always have to sacrifice something for my damage. I hate losing Brain Freeze chain procs as Frost, but those can be avoided to some degree or even negated by taking Frost Bomb. With Arcane I feel myself like Scroodge sitting on a pile of gold and afraid to lose even one coin.

What I tried to achieve with my Arcane rework assumption is still having gameplay that cares about mana, but is not afraid to use it. I tried to make it possible to time your burst and your mana regen phases according to boss battles rather than depending on Evocation to spend your mana. I tried going for a feeling of great power in your hands, which you cannot fully sustain despite being a powerful Arcane mage, but on the other hand you could feel how you become stronger as the expansion progresses by becoming more efficient with your spells by crit rating and mastery. The one thing I tried to achieve the most - is switching from low mana meaning you are weak and your damage sucks to low mana meaning lack of opportunity to wield your true power. If you have mana - you can go all out. If you're low on mana - your spells are still powerful, you just can't unleash them all at once.

Originally Posted by huth

Only if both the explosion and the normal impact damage still occur, which they don't have to. It would be easy to have the explosion only hit secondary targets or replace the normal damage entirely, since such spells already exist.

Besides, it should probably do less than 100% of single target damage for balance purposes.

I don't want to overcomplicate. I thought Arcane Explosion should make all your arcane spells explode on impact with arcane explosion, like it is on live. It won't do too much damage, but might benefit from charges and definitely be good aoe with Arcane Missiles as it'll forcs AE to be cast 5 times.

What's the point of the whole mana regen with Evo and Mana Gem if we have no interaction with mana through your reworked Mastery?

Arcane is the only dps spec which has some form of mana management included because of our Mastery. Blizzard have moved away from mana dependancy for dps spec and Arcane is the only one left.

If you remove our current Mastery or change it in a way that removes the damage/mana component, then the whole point of mana regen becomes pointless.

If Arcane is revamped, it will either completely move away from mana and give us a rotation like other dps have OR they will keep our current Mastery snd just change/add/remove spells to work around it. The middle ground which you suggest is senseless in that way.

I think the best way to handle it is to balance Arcane around having a 40-60% mana pool. Provide an active regen tool as part of the rotation that becomes progressively less effective as current mana increases. Weaving skills to keep in the 40-60% sweet spot, then having the ability to mana cap for burst damage. Offer a moderate way to build up towards a burst phase, and a cooldown to balance against any instances where a mana dump was necessary to burn targets down.

The talents should offer a variation between either being able to burst more often (Invocation), sustain a higher than average mana level (Rune making the sweet spot 60-80%, perhaps), or making burst phases more effective (Ward). This is as the current design suggests, but doesn't really play out that way.

If balance continues assuming players try to maintain a high mana level, everything else feels weak. I like the mana-gaming aspect of Arcane, but the focus needs to be shifted in order to salvage the idea.

The basic premise, and all of the amazing constructive ideas to tweak it and make it truly viable, would make the Arcane Spec something which it hasn't been for quite a while: a CONTRIBUTING member.

I am hoping that the Mage Community will be able to present this to the Blizzard Development Team and not be dismissed out of hand (read: Ghostcrawler throws one of his tantrums and becomes condescendingly tedious, saying that none of the ideas would work because they weren't his ideas).

I've been following as many forums and "talk sessions" as possible, and I've been noticing the same trend, time and again. If egos can be put aside, I think that the re-working of Arcane Mage expressed by the many knowledgeable people would be a major benefit to the entire WoW community.

The mana thing still makes no sense to me. You're making our mana function like a weird attempt at Energy or similar to Diablo 3 Wizard Arcane Power. This would be cool if we didn't have a parallel resource - arcane charges. Again, the system would work if we had Mana Adept like now. If we remove Mana Adept then I find it pointless to balance our dps around when we will have enough mana to do higher dps and when we would have enough to do sustained dps.

My suggestion is that you work out your idea either 100% through Charges (with longer cooldowns on powerful spells) or reintroduce Mana Adept. Both is needlessly complicated and simply weird based on the WoW game design.

Maybe a simpler system with more fluent ways to build and spend charges (which your has) is enough.

I don't want to overcomplicate. I thought Arcane Explosion should make all your arcane spells explode on impact with arcane explosion, like it is on live. It won't do too much damage, but might benefit from charges and definitely be good aoe with Arcane Missiles as it'll forcs AE to be cast 5 times.

You realise that your design doesn't actually eliminate the problem? People would just need a /cancelaura macro.

It's much easier to just not have the explosion hit the primary target, making it useless for single target use.

You realise that your design doesn't actually eliminate the problem? People would just need a /cancelaura macro.

It's much easier to just not have the explosion hit the primary target, making it useless for single target use.

Yeah, I totally forgot you can just cancelaura it. You're right.

Originally Posted by Shanglar

The mana thing still makes no sense to me. You're making our mana function like a weird attempt at Energy or similar to Diablo 3 Wizard Arcane Power. This would be cool if we didn't have a parallel resource - arcane charges. Again, the system would work if we had Mana Adept like now. If we remove Mana Adept then I find it pointless to balance our dps around when we will have enough mana to do higher dps and when we would have enough to do sustained dps.

D3 Wizard's Arcane Power is used in Destruction spec, it's fast spent and fast gained. However, they also have a secondary resource, and it works. Anyway I'm out of ideas right now. Still don't like Mana Adept though.

Tried Arcane in random BGs one of these days. Always assumed it would suck, so didn't bother in MoP. Found it pretty fun in many 1 on 1 settings and in a crowd if you're not focused. The prerequisite was having Incanter's Ward, Deep Freeze glyph and reforging to haste, otherwise everything was too damn slow. Failed miserably against Ferals. Arcane desperately needs some defensives. It has lost all its tricks since WotLK, only semi-useful Slow remains. Being the least mobile and the most ramp-up requiring mage spec, it must have something else rather than just Slow.

What if Arcane had a passive or a glyph or a on-off trigger ability or an armor effect, such as:Arcane Shielding - 15% damage you receive is transferred to your mana pool.

Also D3 Wizard-like ability could be fun:Unstable Anomaly - when you receive fatal damage, you heal to 45% of your maximum health and release a shockwave that knocks enemies back and slows them by 60% for 3 seconds. This effect cannot be triggered more than once per 2 minutes.

Some other survivability idea:Mana Capacitor - all excessive mana gained is transformed into health, the effect is reduced if you choose Invocation talent. That passive will make current Mana Gems useful, will greatly reduce downtime after battles, allow to heal a bit during Invisibility. May even replace Evocation glyph, as it serves basically the same purpose.

Before I give my opinions on all things that have been mentioned throughout this thread, I would like to clarify some basic concepts regarding the Arcane Charges by a series of basic questions:

Of how many Charges we are talking about? 4? A greater number of Charges would give more play in rotations, however, also it would cost more work accumulating all.

Do Arcane Charges should expire as they do now? (Currently they have a life span of about 10 seconds) And if they expire ... do they disappear all at once or they would go losing one by one?

Do the benefits/detriments of Arcane Charges will be global to all spells or else every spell will get an individual benefit/detriment of their own? In theory I am in favor of the former, yet some spells could have side effects on the basis of the number of Arcane Charges available or maybe some spell may require a minimum number of Charges to be casted.

What exactly would be the benefits/detriments that would offer the Arcane Charges? Historically we have had:

- Benefits: increase the damage of Arcane spells, increase the haste of Arcane Blast, increase the number of targets hit by Arcane Barrage, increase mana regeneration of Evocation.